Does anyone know where the slang term "cracker" comes from?   

It originated post civil war when the carpet baggers came down south. The carpet baggers would "crack" their whips on the horses pulling the buggy. Hince the term "cracker" for males from the North was born.

never heard of that before. what's the slang for males from the south of your country?

The term was used for that group of people only during that time period. Through the years the term has come to mean any white person - it is a racial slur. Most people think the term derived from the soda cracker but the term goes back much further than that to the civil war.

i thought that was gr1ngo?

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i know. actually it is more of a xenophobic one - it has lots of definitions. according to the people where i worked it was supposed to mean just people from the states however it was used to cover northern europeans if they couldn't tell the difference likewise australians. i asked if it covered me and was told no because i'm european but i don't believe anybody there could tell the difference between say a norwegian and a blond from texas. there is a racial element to it but since hispanics are lets face it also from the same european background as those they use it for it is a pretty pointless one.

and (going a little offtopic) we had conversations about where it came from and the general opinion is that it came from mexico after some invasion or other from the north and was a corruption of an english phrase 'green eyes go home' - which doesn't seem all that likely to me.

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that makes more sense. don't know why the people in the country i was in thought it had anything to do with green eyes (which incidently are the best possible colour for eyes, and i think equally rare in both the states and mexico although there are a few from both lots that have them. btw can you guess what colour mine are?)

hold on a second i would assume that i was being picked on there if it wasn't for the fact that one of them had green eyes herself. hmmm.

I think the term you're looking for, jb78000, is 'hick' or 'redneck' or 'hillbilly'; though I'm not sure if they're restricted to northern- and/or southern America now.

actually those are dead handy xenophobic terms and i am sure i could use them to describe everybody from the states although personally i prefer 'yanks'

So did I until I found the information in an old book I was reading. The book had a lot of cool information in it.